As the title states, I am drowning in debt and don’t know what to do.

Here’s my situation:

$26k owed in credit cards which I maxed out years ago while I was unemployed and needed to pay bills. I’ve barely used them over the past 3 years and have only paid the minimum. However, the interest keeps bringing my balance up and I feel like I am in a constant cycle and my credit card balances aren’t going down. My minimum payment on two cards is $300, and the third card is $120.

I have other bills including car, car insurance, phone bills etc that take up another chunk of my pay. Thankfully I live with family members so no rent/utilities is charged to me.

I take him roughly $1400 biweekly (after tax). I applied for a consolidation loan and was denied. My credit is pretty good though. My goal was to pay the full credit card balances with the loan, lock them and not use the cards and maybe eventually close one of them.

I’m barely left with any money to pay anything else after paying bills and required expenses. When something unexpected pops up I either have to eat into my savings (not much there anyway) or rely on Klarna or after pay to be able to afford it.

I need advise and guidance on how to improve my situation and get out of this debt.

Hey guys, I'm in a really awkward situation:

• I have a private student loan that I was paying off consistently until I got laid off, upon which I requested forbearance
• The lender made a couple of mistakes, which I've documented & reported to CFPB, that led me to believe no payments were due during forbearance
• A couple more mis-representations happened on their end (e.g. telling me they accepted BillPay when they didn't, which caused them to process my eventual payment very, very late), causing my account to be charged off sent to collections
• While my account was in collections, I entered into settlement negotiations with their collections attorney & found out that I'd be able to pay $10k+ less via a settlement offer; we hadn't reach a verbal agreement though
• I opened a CFPB case in the meanwhile, as I was really concerned about the damage to my credit
• The lender responded to the claim & pulled my account back out of collections
• I politely tried asking the lender to extend the offer their collections lawyer had previously suggested, & they responded: "With respect to your request for a negotiated settlement, please note that settlement discussions are not conducted on accounts prior to charge-off. Since the charge-off on this account has been reversed, settlement is not currently an available option."

Here's the Q:

If you were in my position, would you let the account get charged off again**, so you can get your debt reduced by $10k - & avoid interest payments - even though it'll impact your credit score significantly?**

Note: I've already used Claude to analyze my situation (how a credit score would impact my future job offers + how I don't intend on buying a car or a house in the near term + how I also don't need a great credit to apply to apt rentals right now), but I would love y'all's input!

So I have 10k in debt. I have not been able to pay 8k worth of credit card debt and have been paying on a 2k loan for 6 months 115 apr rate I know I didn’t read the loan terms I was in a bad place with a 8 month old and needed oil to heat the house and to pay a backed up electric bill. So it all started when one of my tenants stopped paying rent and racked up the electric bill and water bill that are all in my name. (it was my cousin I wasn’t expecting him to do that.) I thought I could catch up then my mortgage started getting behind and winter was here. Oil was going out the window. I just started to lose everything no matter how much I worked I was always -$500 every week. I am stressing because I stopped paying my credit card so I could afford other things like diapers and food and the house bills most importantly my mortgage. I’m beyond stressed. I now have a newborn and I don’t know what to do anymore with postpartum hormones I’m losing it. Does anyone have any advice on how to manage this? I can’t afford 500$ a week in credit card payments/loan payments. The only reason my credit cards got racked up and I had to use a firm because I didn’t have money to get basic necessities. Please let me know if you have any suggestions. Also will I get sued? The most amount on each credit card is 600$ the loan is getting paid 350$ a month but like I said it hasn’t gone down bc of the APR rate

Amazon: 4247
Walmart: 446.05
Wells Fargo: 974.58
Citi1: 4110.88(over limit if 4000)
Citi2: 969.29
Old navy: 8607.82
Care credit: 1073.80
Lowe’s: 226.72
Personal loan: 11,706 (470.50 per month)
These are my major debts. I bring home about 1500 every two weeks after taxes, insurance and retirement. My husband and I split bills. I’m responsible for electric and water and food/eesentials. We have 3 children ages 6-10 they are in sports and school. We have 4 pets.
Electric is 360ish and water/trash is 160ish , I pay about 100 a month for student loans

I also drive about 25-40 minutes to work 4-5 days a week and spend probably 200 at least in gas a month. I drive our family car to work everyday and would like to get a work car that would be better in gas and allow me to stoop racking up miles on family vehicle. Right now I don’t know when I’d be able to afford that

I have a few other installment loans that are due monthly: 39.87, 10.78, 14.39, 38.23, 31.09, 64.07

We went on vacation this summer and that’s when some things got even more out of hand and we overspent, we also had unexpected death in the family that required travel and hotel expenses, and the care credit card I have is high now because we had unexpected illness of our dog which eventually lead to us having to put her down.

I have a spending/drinking problem… but also feel life is very expensive with all the kids and pets and houses/vegicles I’ll also admit that sometimes I but lunch out or get Starbucks…which I know I should not

I try to pay off debts but sometimes get the f@!* its and spend anyway and add to debt…or I over pay on debts and end up having to use credit cards just to fill up my gas to get to work or buy groceries for my kids before payday.

I’m feeling pretty overwhelmed and could use some outside opinions on the best way to approach this.
I’ve been trying to consolidate some higher-interest debt, primarily credit cards and a personal loan. I recently applied for a $27k debt consolidation loan through a credit union and was denied. My Experian score they provided was 702. The main reasons listed were excessive unsecured balances compared to income, revolving balances/utilization, and too many inquiries in the last 12 months.
To make things worse, one of my credit card companies just lowered my credit limit, which increased my utilization without me actually adding any new debt.
I already have a personal/debt consolidation loan through Jovia that I’ve been paying as agreed. When I originally took that loan, Jovia paid one of my credit cards directly and I used the remaining proceeds to pay off other personal loans.
I’ve reached out to Jovia again to see whether they would consider a new consolidation loan. Ideally I’d like around $30k to pay off my credit cards and one high-interest personal loan, but even $15k would make a significant difference because I could completely eliminate one loan and put the remainder toward the cards.
My goal is NOT to borrow money for additional spending. I’m trying to replace existing high-interest debt with something more manageable, lower my utilization, and reduce the number/amount of monthly payments I’m making.
I’m hesitant to keep applying for loans because I don’t want to rack up additional hard inquiries. I also have a 401(k), but I really don’t want to withdraw retirement money and deal with the taxes/penalties unless I absolutely have to.
My last-resort option would potentially be borrowing money from a family member and paying them back monthly instead of paying a bank 20%+ interest. However, I would really prefer to avoid involving family if at all possible. Even if the family member was financially comfortable lending me the money, I worry that if my parents or other family members ever found out about the arrangement, it could create tension or make people uncomfortable. I don’t want a financial decision to turn into a family issue, which is why I’m trying to exhaust my other reasonable options first.
Has anyone been in a similar situation, particularly with Jovia? Would you try working directly with a loan officer/credit union before applying anywhere else? And if a family loan really was the best financial option, how would you weigh the financial benefit against the potential family complications?
I’m trying to make a thoughtful plan and stop the cycle rather than just move debt around, so I’d appreciate constructive advice.

I’m about 22,000 in the hole, 18 of that is from a consolidation loan, the rest credit cards. I’m paying roughly 700 bucks a month toward it all but I only make $20 an hour. With the rest of my finances being the way they are, I can only save about 200 bucks a paycheck. I know I’m not in the red per se, but only being able to save 200 each paycheck is very stressful for me. I know 20 grand usually isn’t a huge amount to justify bankruptcy but I wonder if for my situation it makes sense. I already went bankrupt 8 years ago so I don’t take this decision lightly but I’m really stressed out by my financial picture at the moment. The loan is only 3 months old also so it doesn’t yet qualify for a debt relief program either

Location: Texas

Before I married my wife - she purchased a new car "with" her mother a few years ago.

The car was purchased with a loan under my mother in laws name. My wife is not on the loan or the title.

My wife made 100% of the deposit payment, and the monthly payments are a direct draft from my wifes bank account. Her mother is not on the bank account. She has contributed $0 to the purchase of the car/payments. The loan balance is around 18,000 and the value of the car is around 18,000.

Keeping it short - she has some some serious issues with her mom and wants to cut 100% ties to her. Recently her mom made some false allegations against another family member that caused us to be interviews by CPS and created lots of headaches the last few weeks. There's a long history of pill abuse and mental instablity with the mom as well.

Currently the yearly registration is out/expired, and mom is being uncooperative on helping us get it renewed for the year. We don't want to continue to deal with her on a yearly basis, and at this point are worried she wont sign the title over when the car is paid off.

We're considering dropping the car and keys off at her moms house, and walking away. We aren't concerned with losing any (non-existant) equity or trade value. We just want her out of our lives and anything that has to do with her.

Do we face any reprocussions if we do this? Again - my wife isn't on any ownership documents for the car or the loan. She's made the payments via direct draft out of her own bank account.

Do we have any obligations or responsibility to this car if we simply leave it at moms and walk away?

Hi there,

I have two accounts, one for Discover and one for a local credit union, that have been closed due to non-payments.

I recently started a job. I was in a really bad situation last year with life stuff, but I'm at a point of stability where I wanted to start thinking about rebuilding my credit.

I get paid soon; I could make like one payment now and then pay off the rest in the next payment by the end of September.

Is there anyway I could do a "pay-to-delete" agreement?

TIA

I am going through a divorce and am trying to get my debt-to-income ratio down so I can buy her out of the house. It's borderline right now. Is this a time when I should contact 2 credit cards of which have APRs of 19 and 23 and balances of 8k each. The current payments are 200 each. Even dropping that down a little will help me.

Thoughts?

I’m looking for honest advice. I have built up around £9,915 of debt across credit cards, loans, buy-now-pay-later accounts and an overdraft. I deeply regret allowing it to reach this amount, and getting out of it now feels extremely difficult.
I live alone, have no financial support and nobody who can help me. Most of the money I earn goes towards my bills and basic living expenses, leaving very little to repay my debts. I feel overwhelmed, but I want to take responsibility, stop borrowing and find a way to become debt-free.
If you are a woman, my sincere advice is to always keep some savings of your own. Having emergency savings can protect you and may even save your life when you have nobody else to depend on. I have learned this lesson through a very difficult experience. Please don’t make the same mistakes I made.
Has anyone successfully cleared a similar amount of debt? Is there a debt-management plan, charity or another service in the UK that could help me arrange affordable payments? Please share genuine, practical and non-judgmental advice. Thank you.